Grey Feather

The Avian Empire

The old man pulled out a wooden stool and sat down, setting a weathered cane on the bar. The pub was a filthy place, coated with a decade's dust and populated with drunken, brutish men whose words came from their mouth, rather than the brain. The air stank of molded tablecloths, crusted on the sides.

It was also the only place in town where one can get a decently brewed beer.

Ordering his usual, he resumed his habit of listening in to nearby conversations.

"Have you heard 'bout the Perg'sons daughter?" One man with a face full of mustache grunted to his fellow table-sitters."The one with the pretty bosom, lives by the woods?"

"What abou' her?" Another man chortled. "Gonna shake the sheets with her an'time soon?"

The old man frowned disapprovingly, taking a quiet sip of beer from a dirty glass.

"Nah' man," The man clunked down his glass of yellow liquid, causing the table to teeter. "She a queer one."

"I heard from my momma's milkman,"A younger boy, in his twenties, chipped in the conversation enthusiastically, "who heard it from his wife, that the Pergursons' daughter, she's mad."

The old man chuckled to himself.

"You gonna run off with her, kid?" The mustache man barked, causing a roar of laughter from the men at the table.

"No, really." The young boy said, amidst the rowdy guffawing. "Her family, the milkman's neighbors, were going to send a missing persons report to the sheriff when they saw her, near the edge of the forest, going at it lovingly with some feathered bird. Naked."

The table had quieted down. "You kidding, boy." A gruff man uttered, a little unsurely.

"Not kidding. Traumatized for life, they were." The boy went on. "They brought her back just to disown her. She went into the forest, hasn't been seen fo' days now."

"Rumors." A gravelly voice said.

"You can go visit their family." The boy leaned back into his chair, a lazy smirk now apparent on his countenance. "I'll betcha my whole fortune there ain't no pretty-bosomed girl there."

The old man glanced at his watch, pushed his beer back to the bartender, half-finished, and as the day wound down to a chilly evening breeze and a fading glow, traipsed his way home down the cobbled street.

~ 9 months later ~

"You come back here and finish your eggs, Atticus Beard!" An elderly, rotund woman, waved a pan at her husband threateningly, donning a floral apron that stretched dangerously at the waist.

"If only the eggs were cooked better, perhaps then I would try them, Diana." The old man said with a teasing smile. Picking up his cane and a straw hat, he announced that he was going for a trek in the woods. "Perhaps shoot a squirrel as well."

"Well I'm comin' with ya'" said the woman, rubbing her hands together, calloused from rolling dough and scrubbing floors. "Ain't been outta this house since our son's been born. Now he's off to god-knows-where uni-whatsits?"

"University, darling. A place the smart-alecky go to."

"Tha's the word."

The forest ground was thick with fallen tree bark and wild grass that crunched under their feet, but all was familiar to the old man. In a few hours, the couple waded down to a clearing deep in the forest with a rifle on the man's back.

"We really shoulda invite the Burlingtons and the Smith children here for a picnic or two." The woman said breathlessly, looking at the grassy green meadow. "It's rather peaceful down here. Quiet."